Research into teaching strategies, motivation and anxiety has employed qualitative, quantitative and mixed-methods approaches. Each has its strengths, and potential
drawbacks, and this is discussed at greater length in the methods and methodology chapter which follows on from the literature review.
Price (1991), for example, conducted interviews to gain detailed descriptions o f what it is like to be an anxious student in a foreign language class, and chose to use student insights as a source o f information on questions o f potential interest to the FL educator. Analysing such qualitative data can be problematic. In studying the meaning o f teacher influence, Zhu (2007) interviewed 46 participants who described how their current and former English teachers affected their motivation Although the data produced provided more insight into student perceptions, it was also described as scattered and difficult to manage. However, there is strong support for qualitative research in motivation
2014). In fact, although quantitative methods have been dominant for many years (MacIntyre and Gardner, 1989), qualitative research methods in addressing modern language learning motivation and anxiety have enjoyed increasing prominence recently (Lamb, 2014; Ushioda, 2009). The quantitative approach requires valid and reliable instruments in order to generate valuable data. It can be criticised for being impersonal and not adding depth to data. However, a considerable advantage is that it facilitates large samples and is generalizable.
Existing questionnaires or scales devised by other researchers, with few or no changes, are a popular research method and are sometimes used after merely calculating the alpha score as an index o f reliability (internal consistency) o f the scale. However, Cronbach's alpha on its own by no means supports the validity o f the scale. Furthermore, as Panayides (2013) explains, high alpha does not always guarantee high reliability for the right reasons and suggests caution when interpreting its values. That is to say that if many questions are parallel, essentially asking the same thing, for example, then the alpha will be high but unfortunately the concept under investigation may not be covered well. In other words, the focus is too narrow. This supports the need for careful piloting and validation o f instruments prior to use.
Reusch et al. (2012), for example, followed a similar procedure to that o f the highly respected studies o f Dornyei and Csizer (1998) and Cheng and Domyei (2007) with some modifications to the instrument. Domyei and Csizer (1998) conducted an empirical investigation o f Hungarian teachers o f English who evaluated 51 motivational strategies. This led to the ‘Ten commandments for motivating learners’, the list set out on page 21 o f the 10 most important motivational macrostrategies emerging from Domyei (2001). The initial item pool contained over 100 strategies, which was reduced by piloting the
instrument. Cheng and Domyei (2007) later consulted 387 teachers o f EFL in Taiwan from elementary schools to universities, using a 49-item questionnaire.
Dewaele and Al-Saraj (2013) developed their questionnaire after gathering information from Saudi Arabian students on their perspectives and anxiety-related experiences while learning a foreign language. Students were asked to answer a single, open-ended question in an anonymous written questionnaire. The initial plan for the present study was to use the FLCAS (Horwitz et al., 1986, see Appendix A4, pp. 196-200) in assessing the students’ anxiety, but Panayides and Walker (2013) found it to have limitations, and it needed improving in order to become a strong and appropriate instrument from which reliable findings could be derived. This led to the creation o f the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Inventory (FLCAI, Walker and Panayides, 2014, see Appendix A3, pp. 194-195). It should be noted that the original scale, which has been extensively used with success, was devised almost three decades ago for use with
university students in America. It is therefore not surprising that 27 years later it was not found to be appropriate in its entirety for Cypriot senior high school students. In creating the FLCAI, Walker and Panayides (2014) generated new items through consultation with students, EFL teachers and recently retired veterans in the field. The 18-item FLCAI contains only seven items from Horwitz et al.’s (1986) FLCAS.
Sugita McEown and Takeuchi (2010) examined the impact o f motivational teaching strategies on student motivation in EFL lower high school students by looking into the teachers’ self-report o f the frequency with which 15 strategies were used and the strength o f student motivation Perceptions o f teachers’ strategy use have been found to affect L2 motivation more than the actual use o f strategies (Bemaus and Gardner, 2008, p. 388). In the present study, students report their perceptions o f the nature and frequency o f the teachers’ use o f MTSB.
Others have preferred observation over questionnaires in investigating the relationship between L2 teachers’ instructional practice and their students’ English learning motivation Papi and Abdollahzadeh (2012), for example, used the Motivational Orientation o f Language Teaching classroom observation scheme (MOLT, Guilloteaux and
Dômyei, 2008), whereas Hurd (2007) used a multi-instrument approach with several intervention points to investigate the prevalence o f anxiety in the distance learning
environment. Wong (2014) on the other hand used three tools, namely lesson observations by an EFL researcher, teacher self-rated questionnaires and student questionnaires at three different points intime, in order to investigate motivational strategies and their
effectiveness. Also o f relevance to the methods o f the study presented here, Torres and Turner (2014) suggest that we should discover which techniques students themselves consider effective in L2 learning.
Lamb stresses the fact that L2 motivation research has traditionally focused on the motivation o f learners rather than ‘how they were affected by classroom experiences’ (2014, p. 8). Although existing research includes studies investigating motivational teaching strategies, and a fair amount on pedagogical recommendations, the latter is often not based on research evidence. Moreover, comparisons between teacher and learner perspectives are very much under researched. More needs to be known about how
motivation and anxiety are shaped by classroom experiences. The present study, therefore, aimed to enrich educational research by investigating the influence o f teaching strategies and behaviours on classroom motivation and anxiety from a new methodological
perspective involving both learners and their teachers and using a variety o f methods, as described in the following chapter.
The literature discussed here, the gaps which this study aims to fill and a
pedagogical desire to learn about student EFL classroom motivation and anxiety led to the design o f the following research questions.